The vast majority of commercial products you might encounter on a daily basis have had to pass a variety of standards, from the materials they are composed of, the shape, the packaging and instructions, to the machines that produce them. Most commonly associated with health and safety regulations, and technical equipment such as screws and mobile phone chargers, standardization is becoming increasingly relevant to people-centred processes, such as management. Just as standardizing a mobile phone charger ensures high quality and means that it can be used transferably with many different mobile phones, standardization of soft processes supports collaboration as part of much more complex processes. 

Planning a city to adapt to climate change involves the intersection of a number of complex systems, each of which involves unknown, uncertain and unpredictable factors. Climate is in itself an incredibly complex system, cities are complex systems, and municipal workers balance all of this complexity with limited budgets, political priorities and practical considerations. Standardization is one way in which municipalities and local councils can create a common language so that they can use the same methods and software as one another for a process as specific as climate change adaptation. 

“Cities use standards in their daily work, for example, to determine quality of products and services in their procurement processes,” said Holger Robrecht, ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability. “However, they are not so used to applying standards and norms related to their management procedures, for example, related to climate change adaptation or urban resilience. However, whilst a few large cities often have capacity to develop, establish and maintain their tailor-made procedures, the vast majority cannot. They depend on high quality and up-to-date information and reference documents that guide their management of climate change adaptation. Standardisation picks upon cutting-edge expertise to provide such guidance.”

The city of Bratislava (Slovakia) is one city looking to standardized approaches to adapt to climate change. Bratislava has put a climate change adaptation strategy in place to deal with the climate challenges the city is facing, such heatwaves and droughts, and has now arrived at the point of developing an action plan to turn the strategy into reality. Gathering data for this process has proven to be a challenge for the city, but real progress is being made, in part thanks to cooperation with universities including the University of Bratislava.

Bratislava has been applying an Impact and Vulnerability Analysis of Vital Infrastructures and built-up Areas (IVAVIA) tool locally to assess vulnerability on the basis of risk. According to Eva Streberová, Climate Adaptation Expert, City of Bratislava (Slovakia), using this tool depends on cooperation between the city council and its stakeholders, providing a range of co-benefits. Bratislava is also a signatory of the Mayors Adapt initiative, whereby the city committed to contributing to the aims of the EU Adaptation Strategy. This commitment is associated with a comprehensive reporting process, and Bratislava has found that using the IVAVIA tool has made this reporting process easier.  

IVAVIA is a standardized approach to making a vulnerability and risk assessment. It is made up of three qualitative and 3 quantitative steps followed by presentation module. During the IVAVIA process, cities produce impact chain diagrams, which make the cause-effect relationships between the consequences of hazards and exposed objects visible. Later in the process, cities can develop detailed risk maps that can show city councils which areas in the city are in need of particular attention. IVAVIA can help cities not only uncover risk and vulnerability issues affecting them, but can also help to communicate these in a visual way.  

Greater Manchester (United Kingdom) has also used the IVAVIA method to arrive at systematically mapped risk indicators and indices, with a particular focus on flooding and its repercussions on the transport network. Use of the tool has enabled Greater Manchester to produce an impact chain demonstrating the interactions between pluvial flooding and the system of major arterial roads in Greater Manchester. Developing this impact chain brought transport agency staff into closer working contact with the municipality.

“The 'beauty' of standards lie in their global availability, hands-on foundation and an inherent regular review mechanism keeping the standard at speed with the generation of knowledge and experience,” said Robrecht. “Being voluntary by nature, cities can 'pick and choose' what fits best to strengthen their climate change adaptation management.”

These outcomes were shared at the RESIN project’s session, “Standardized support tools for urban resilience, integrating resilience planning into local decision-making” at the Bonn Resilient Cities conference, 27 April 2018.

The cities of the Smart Mature Resilience project met for the closing occasion of SMR’s successful Tier 3 city programme last week in Bonn. While the project began with seven cities as full project partners, an additional seven cities have become active and engaged in the project, many of whose representatives are also active contributors to SMR’s standardization preparation activities.

Cities establish common ground

Giampaolo Tarpignati, Comune di Udine (Italy) represented SMR’s first official Tier 4 city and shared the inspiring story of how even a small municipality can become a local figurehead and can spur its larger-sized neighbour cities to take transformative action on resilience.

SMR’s partner city of Kristiansand (Norway) could identify with Udine’s situation. Silje Solvang, City of Kristiansand (Norway) said, “We are a very small city, we are only 90,000 inhabitants, and to learn and see that other cities have similar challenges and similar obstacles due to law and leadership and politicians: it has been very good for us to know that we're not the only one.”

Marco Cardinaletti, Project Manager, Region of Emilia-Romagna (Italy) shared innovative communication methods to disseminate project results to stakeholders in the fields of adaptation and resilience, including a children’s theatre performance.

Looking back over SMR’s co-creation practice

The SMR project was conducted according to the principles of co-creation. Discussions throughout the event produced a plethora of understandings and manifestations of this practice. Jose Maria Sarriegi, SMR project coordinator, emphasised the importance of finding balance for a productive co-creation process. On the one hand, he urged researchers to be open to adapting their models to the feedback and needs of end users. On the other hand, he urged end users to understand the benefits of making tools generic and adaptable: “We are creating the tools not just for them but for the whole community.”

From the point of view of cities, co-creation means involving colleagues and stakeholders from inside and outside the municipality, sharing the project outputs with them and feeding their perspectives back into the co-design process. “The most important thing we learned [through the SMR project] is the holistic approach to think resilience. Resilience has not been a familiar term, now it's becoming a familiar term, and it is how to cooperate with internal stakeholders, external stakeholders and how we all together move forward. When you work together and cooperate together, the outcome is resilient,” said Silje Solvang, City of Kristiansand.

Circle of Sharing and Learning

The project’s dissemination of project outputs to cities has followed a ‘Circle of Sharing and Learning’, whereby additional cities have become progressively involved in the project as it developed. The project began with the three core cities of Donostia (Spain), Glasgow (United Kingdom) and Kristiansand (Norway). These cities tested the project’s tools and are referred to as ‘Tier 1’ cities. The next ‘tier’ of cities; Bristol (United Kingdom), Rome (Italy), Riga (Latvia) and Vejle (Denmark) provided feedback and review to the tool testing process. This group is referred to as ‘Tier 2’. Each ‘Tier 2’ city was paired with a ‘Tier 1’ city, with whom they worked particularly closely.

“It’s been brilliant working with other European cities… It’s great having the ability to build a strong peer network with our counterparts of the European cities and also to get outside of our comfort zone. You can get very locked into your own way of thinking, a very UK-centric approach, so we’ve been able to widen our perspective and understand the other challenges other European cities are going through. It’s been great working with Donostia, they’re our Tier 2 City, so we’ve got to know a lot of the challenges they’ve got in their city and we’ve had great conversations with them and sharing our learning on resilience,” said Lucy Vilarkin, Bristol City Council.  

The first two tiers were full project partners. Communication and dissemination activities created a third tier of cities in the final year of the project, comprising Athens (Greece), Greater Amman Municipality (Jordan), Greater Manchester (United Kingdom), Malaga (Spain), Malmö (Sweden), Rekjavik (Iceland) and Thessaloniki (Greece). These cities were part of the ‘Tier 3’ and attended three in-person events and a series of webinars. At the in-person events and webinars, Tier 1 and Tier 2 city representatives facilitated and presented the project results, thereby transferring the knowledge they had gained through the project directly to the new cities. These Tier 3 cities signed an official Statement of Commitment to participate in the project.

“We, as the city of Thessaloniki, are very happy to be here, we were also in the event in Brussels a couple of weeks ago,” said George Dimarelos, City of Thessaloniki. “We have a big interest in cooperating and forming a network with other cities… in order to share our experiences and our challenges.”

The final ‘Tier 4’ is an open-ended group and may encompass cities beyond Europe and beyond the end of the project’s funding period. Helena Perxacs Motgé, Provincial Council of Barcelona (Spain) discussed the opportunities and challenges of the local economy and society to adapt to climate change. As part of her work in the Provincial Council of Barcelona, Ms Perxacs Motgé provides support to a number of municipalities in the province of Barcelona, works with stakeholders to improve local resilience and adaptation, particularly in terms of agriculture, forestry, fishery and tourism in different areas in Catalonia. Ms Perxacs Motgé found that the tools and methodologies developed by the SMR project could be directly applicable for this context, explaining, “It was good to get ideas from the tools and resources developed during the SMR project. We will try to implement and to use those in our project CLINOMICS, and to use these methodologies for the discussions with the stakeholders to increase their resilience and adaptation to climate change.” Udine (Italy) is the first city to return a signed Statement of Commitment to join the Tier 4. 

SMR co-organised the Open European Day at Bonn Resilient Cities, which saw the highest ever attendance and inspiring discussions. As a pre-event to Open European Day, SMR held its Final City Resilience Conference.

A photo gallery of the event is available at https://www.flickr.com/photos/iclei_europe/sets/72157693144111942/.

The Italian municipalities of Bologna and Genoa called for local authorities attending Open European Day 2018 in Bonn (Germany) today to join them in contributing to the EU Urban Agenda

The municipality of Bologna (Italy), Genoa (Italy) and the European Investment Bank last week called for the local governments that met at the Open European Day event in Bonn to contribute to the European Urban Agenda by participating in the EU Partnerships on Adaptation and one on Land Use Planning  and Nature-Based Solutions.  

Giovanni Fini, City of Bologna, said: “The main aim of the partnership is to contribute to the forthcoming European policies on urban development. This is a truly challenging activity and it will only succeed if we can involve as many other European cities and local authorities as possible.”

“The Urban Agenda is an inclusive participatory instrument, that put on the same round table local authorities, Member States, Directorates General of the EU, EU programmes, networks and stakeholders, all together in a multilevel co-operative approach to discuss and co-work for the future policies through delivery of an Action Plan,” said Stefania Manca, Genoa Municipality and coordinator of the Climate Adaptation Partnership Urban Agenda. “The message is that all of us are equal. On the field of climate adaptation, our main focus is on Climate Resilience, vulnerability assessment and risk management. We are at the Open European Day to spread the work of the partnership, to help us involve more cities in the process of the public consultation of the Plan foreseen after June 2018.”

The Open European Day was first held in 2013 and is known among municipal climate practitioners as the place to meet other local governments and swap methods and opportunities for implementing climate change adaptation and urban resilience measures.

155 local government representatives, climate change adaptation experts and local and national government representatives have joined the climate adaptation conference in Bonn to meet other city representatives for peer-based discussions.

Reinhard Limbach, Deputy Mayor of the city of Bonn, hosts of the event, said: “To be prepared for future incidents, we must create suitable technical infrastructure and work on an innovative, nature-based strategy… I find it so important to come together and to make use of the elaborated European system, to benefit from the exchange with our direct neighbours.”

As the event, organized by ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability and the European Environment Agency, has grown over five editions, European institutions are seeing the value in joining the conversation with local governments.

“What regional organizations do, the country does, or even the European Union does, matters for cities,” said Birgit Georgi, Strong Cities in a Changing Climate. “They build a framework in which the cities connect, and so we started to invite more and more also these levels, like from the European Commission or national governments or regional governments and other supporters, because as cities cannot move alone forward to be more resilient, national governments, you cannot without these cities. We have to work together in a multi-level approach.”

The 5th edition was supported by the European Commission, the European Investment Bank and Ramboll and co-organised by the European-funded Smart Mature Resilience project, RESIN – Climate Resilient Cities and Infrastructures and PLACARD. The event is held annually.

For more information on the Partnership, please click here.

Photo gallery: https://flic.kr/s/aHsmh5cQct

New guidelines show the way to making Europe’s cities more resilient to natural and man-made disasters.

Europeans are no strangers to high-impact disasters. Ranging from natural events such as earthquakes and floods, to man-made crises in the form of cyberattacks and terrorist incidents, such disasters are becoming increasingly frequent and more severe. This jeopardises critical infrastructures (CIs) like power grids, transport networks and telecommunications systems – that are essential for a society and economy to function.

We need to ensure that our modern societies are better equipped to withstand and bounce back from both expected and unexpected crises. In response to this need, five EU-funded projects, DARWIN, IMPROVER, RESILENS, RESOLUTE and SMR, have developed guidelines for improving European cities’ resilience to natural and man-made disasters. Their efforts have culminated in a ‘White Paper on Resilience Management Guidelines for Critical Infrastructures’. The report provides key recommendations for policymakers to improve policy and implementation strategies throughout the EU.

The White Paper presenting the new guidelines was launched at the Critical Infrastructure Resilience 2018 Conference held in Brussels on 10 April. Resilience experts and end users across the five projects spoke on topics such as resilience intervention tools and benefits, resilience policy, standardisation and current needs, further needs and a roadmap to integration.

Techniques and tools for resilience

To support uptake of the resilience management guidelines, the projects developed a series of techniques and tools. These include conferences and industry presentations, webinars, workshops, and experiments providing hands-on experiences to engage end users.

To teach players about resilience concepts, DARWIN developed a serious game based on virtual reality. RESILENS activities included the creation of an e-learning hub and a resilience management matrix and audit toolkit. SMR developed a Resilience Maturity Model, a strategic tool that provides an ideal roadmap for how the resilience building process should be. Its Resilience Information and Communication Portal, another of its project outputs, serves as a toolbox that can complement and enhance the platforms and software that cities already have in place.

IMPROVER’s cooperation with the European Reference Network for CI Protection has yielded a series of CI operator workshops on CI resilience to ensure that practitioners both inform and benefit from the project’s work. RESOLUTE’s focus on urban transport resilience has resulted in a game-based training app aimed at improving citizen preparation. Another project outcome is an emergency mobile app to keep citizens updated and advise them on what action to take to stay safe in an emergency.

DARWIN (Expecting the unexpected and know how to respond), IMPROVER (Improved risk evaluation and implementation of resilience concepts to critical infrastructure), RESILENS (RESILENS: Realising European ReSiliencE for CritIcaL INfraStructure), RESOLUTE (RESilience management guidelines and Operationalization appLied to Urban Transport Environment), and SMR (Smart Mature Resilience) are now drawing to a close. The European resilience management guidelines resulting from their efforts will guide stakeholders towards helping Europe’s cities to respond to crises more quickly and effectively.

The fifth edition of Open European Day has proven to be the most popular edition yet. Cities are acutely aware of the challenges they are facing and are coming together to discuss these challenges and share solutions with their peers and experts from the world of science and research.

Speakers to join the opening discussion reflecting on the past year and years to come for climate adaptation in Europe will include Nicolas Faivre, DG Research, European Commission, Stefanie Lindenberg, NCFF European Investment Bank, Bernd Decker, EASME/LIFE Programme, Stefania Manca and Paolo Castiglieri, Municipality of Genoa (Italy) for the Climate Adaptation Partnership of the EU Urban Agenda, Eleni Myrivili, City of Athens (Greece), Joanna Kiernicka-Allavena, City of Wroclaw (Poland)/44MPA project and Marian Barquin, Basque Government.

Breakout sessions will see cities discuss topics including flooding, insurance, nature-based solutions, cultural heritage and partnerships and will include contributors from the cities of Arnsberg (Germany), Bologna (Italy), Budapest (Hungary), Cascais (Portugal), Copenhagen (Denmark), Glasgow, Greater Manchester (United Kingdom), Guimaraes (Portugal), Helsinki (Finland), Kristiansand (Norway), Paris (France) and Thessaloniki (Greece). The Open European Day’s successful Marketplace will be back this year as a unique space for exchange and partnerships.

As a new addition for the fifth Open European Day, breakout training sessions will provide expert training on topics including critical infrastructure protection, citizen engagement and financing adaptation.

Strathclyde Business School and Fraunhofer Institute for Intelligent Analysis and Information Systems (IAIS) will provide training on critical infrastructure protection, using the outcomes from the Smart Mature Resilience and RESIN projects, which are co-organising the event.

On:Subject and the European Environment Agency will provide training on citizen engagement for adaptation and EASME/LIFE Programme and the European Investment Bank will provide training for cities on how to access financing to fund urban adaptation. Registration is now closed.

More information and the final programme is available here. 

54 partner organisations across five EU-funded projects have come together to recommend new European Resilience Management Guidelines. Developed over the last three years, these guidelines have the potential to improve the security and safety of citizens and society.

At a major event in Brussels today, these projects - Smart Mature Resilience, DARWIN, IMPROVER, RESILENS and RESOLUTE – launched the ‘White Paper on Resilience Management Guidelines for Critical Infrastructures,’ outlining key recommendations for European policy makers.

To support the uptake of these guidelines, the five projects have developed a series of innovative tools, ranging from serious gaming based on virtual reality and gaming-based training apps, to e-learning hubs and resilience management matrix and audit toolkits.

A panel of end users reflected on the tools developed by the five projects. Silje Solvang, city of Kristiansand, said, "The most valuable outcome of our participation in the SMR project has been the cross-sectoral collaboration, which is essential for resilience." City representatives emphasised the need for access to data, which is only provided by privately owned critical infrastructure providers when the latter is legally obliged to do so. 

SMR project coordinator Jose Maria Sarriegi summarized the outcomes of the panel by notin gthat cooperation is essential for resilience, there is a challenge in communicating resilience, resilience is not only about technology and must include soft factors, there is a need for funding to facilitate further work, and finally, there is a need for the tools and methods produced to be adaptable to changing circumstances.

The European Resilience Management Guidelines and the associated tools were showcased at the Critical Infrastructure Resilience 2018 Conference, which took place on Tuesday 10th April from 09.00 to 16.00 at the Research Executive Agency (Covent Garden), Place Rogier, Brussels.

Attendees, including policy makers, resilience managers and practitioners, heard from resilience experts and end-users across the five projects on topics such as, Resilience Interventions Tools and Benefits; Resilience Policy, Standardisation and Current Needs; and Status, Further Needs and Roadmap to Integration.

The five projects are part of the EU’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme and cooperate together under crisis management topic 7: ‘crisis and disaster resilience – operationalising resilience concepts (DRS-7)’.

Download the white paper here.

Representatives of over 30 cities and regions in Europe, the European Commission and scientific experts on resilience attended the 27th edition of ICLEI Europe’s Breakfast at Sustainability’s series. The event was hosted by the European office of the Basque Country and a welcome address was provided by – Ignacio de la Puerta, Director for Urban Planning of the Basque Government. A brief introduction to the Smart Mature Resilience project and its tools was provided by Vasileios Latinos, ICLEI Europe.

Mr de la Puerta emphasised in his words of welcome the need to provide space and quality of life for Basque residents. An integrated action plan, as well as participation in numerous local, regional and international projects and programmes, such as Donostia/San Sebastián’s participation in the Smart Mature Resilience Project are addressing this need. The path is a shared one and cities in Europe are welcome to join the Basque Country on this journey by considering the pathways towards transformative action laid out in the Basque Declaration.

Cities must work together in a coordinated way towards long-term resilience goals. For Ben Caspar, Team Leader for Urban Environment for the European Commission’s DG Environment, cities have enormous potential to overcome global challenges. The Pact of Amsterdam has made funding streams easier to understand and has led to enhanced support and cooperation between the European Commission and city networks. As well as funding the European Commission offers other resources to cities, including online tools, such as a new portal planned to be launched during Green Week. Ronny Frederickx, Former President and Good Governance Project Leader, UDITE considered resilience from the perspective of good governance, and warned that lack of trust in political leaders, lack of capacity and ‘segregation in craftsmanship’ or lack of cooperation as drivers of risk. He called for a good governance approach in order to overcome these challenges, as well as for a triangle between science, education and practice.

The innovative and inspiring “Room for the river Waal” project saw attitudes among citizens to the large-scale project turn from hostility and resistance, to sentiments among citizens of pride and ownership of the project. Ton Verhoeven, Arnhem Nijmegen City Region, Netherlands shared how this was achieved through intensive communication and engagement of stakeholders.

Glasgow and Rome are working together on their resilience journey: both cities are part of the Smart Mature Resilience project as well as ICLEI members and members of 100 Resilient Cities. Frankie Barrett, Glasgow City Council and Claudio Bordi, Risorse per Roma. Public authorities in Glasgow are as of recently obliged to involve communities as part of their work, and ongoing projects range across numerous topical areas, for example food security and land use. In Glasgow’s experience, "When citizens are not involved in the plan, it will fail." Rome has used a tool produced by the Smart Mature Resilience project, the Risk Systemicity Questionnaire, to hold cross-sectoral meetings with a goal to break silos and better understand risk.

Annette Figueiredo, Greater London Authority described a recently concluded audit of school air quality in London. Poor air quality has detrimental effects on children’s learning, and a survey revealed that over 360 schools were in poor air quality areas. The Mayor of London, as part of a vision to clean up London’s air received a petition from Greenpeace signed by 303 teachers calling for better air quality near schools, and fifty schools were selected.  The project involved the cooperation of the relevant boroughs, Transport for London, Public Health and other Greater London Authority programmes working with schools, researchers and academics. The collected data will be used in the schools’ curricula so that students can understand how it affects their lives.

For the second part of the day, Serene Hanania, ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability, invited cities to participate in an interactive workshop. Discussion groups considered topics such as heat waves, flood risks, social issues and emergency response and exchanged their experiences from their respective cities on the topics. The SMR project representatives then demonstrated how the tools co-produced in the project by cities and researchers could support the newcomer cities in overcoming the challenges they raised in the discussions.

In terms of flooding, cross-departmental silos were found to be a major challenge in British cities, as management of water courses was not closely linked to response mechanisms, and vulnerable groups were found to be more exposed to flood risk. Here, Nijmegen could explain their unique case, where better communication on water planning and management is possible due to Dutch water boards. The SMR City Resilience Dynamics tool was mentioned in a possible application to measure surface water interventions.

On the subject of heat waves, desertification and the benefits of reforestation were discussed for cities in Spain. In Italy, paradoxically, abandonment of agricultural areas and increase of rain has led to natural reforestation. The most vulnerable cities to heat waves were considered to be Athens and Rome. Here, the Risk Systemicity Questionnaire was recommended, as awareness of the risk of heat waves seriously underestimates the real mortality rate among elderly people during periods of extreme heat. Malmö, Sweden, expressed the benefits of exchanging with Southern cities with cultural experience of caring for the elderly during heat waves, as heat stress is becoming an increasing problem for Malmö. Here, better access to data on mortality rates would be helpful to gain political support for, elderly, patient and hospice care to take additional measures during heat waves.

A common feature of the cities was the importance of involving volunteers and NGOs in emergency response. While cities and municipalities must adhere to standards, guidelines and norms for emergency response, citizens can step in and provide non-professional support magnanimously, for example providing unofficial transport and meals to refugees. Dedicated policies for involving NGOs and volunteers are included in the Resilience Maturity Model.

IT solutions offer interesting innovative ways to prevent food waste and to build communities in new way. Representative democracy and transparent decision-making were considered to be crucial foundations for social resilience. Decreasing vulnerability is intricately connected to employment, and in the case of French regions, citizens can become alienated as a result of unemployment. 

The cities present shared many aspects and practices around emergency response. Most cities had emergency plans and the same way of responding to an emergency. Malmö provided another perspective, for example, that experts were called in the event of a crisis. In each of the cities, in many cases, those working in emergency response have other responsibilities under normal circumstances, where response takes preference over these duties during a crisis. Risk assessment was considered essential, and the SMR Risk Systemicity Questionnaire is available to be used as part of this process.

A photo gallery of the event is available at https://flic.kr/s/aHsmeXRgWi.

City council teams in Bratislava (Slovakia) and Manchester (UK) have teamed up with the cities of Paris (France), Bilbao (Spain), top European researchers,  and city network ICLEI - Local Governments for Sustainability to make their cities and critical infrastructures more resilient to the impacts of climate change.  

A new short film has been launched today showing how Manchester and Bratislava are working with a team of cities and scientists to help municipalities to adapt to a rapidly-changing climate. A second period of unprecedented snow across Europe this weekend following the “Beast from the East” earlier this month has shown that extreme weather is becoming the new normal.

“What was good enough in the past, and maybe 10 years ago, it’s not enough for the future,” said Martina Tichá, Head of Project Management Unit, Strategy and Projects Department at Bratislava City Hall. Bratislava, where an orange alert was raised due to freezing temperatures this Saturday, can expect extreme heat as early as May this year.

As most of Europe’s population lives in cities, city councils across Europe desperately need new ways of working to understand the risks they face and to prepare for the unknown. “The decision makers in Greater Manchester need to know key issues and why they should do something about it,” said Matthew Ellis, Climate Resilience Officer, Greater Manchester Combined Authority.

“Every job within a local authority will be impacted by climate change in the future: every decision that's made will need to take account of what the future climate change risks might be,” said Mark Atherton, Director of Environment, Greater Manchester Combined Authority.

RESIN - Climate Resilient Cities and Infrastructures has been developing innovative tools in a process of ‘co-creation’ between cities, climate scientists and ICLEI since 2015. In Manchester in February 2018, the project held an event to share the new tools with representatives of over 15 cities.  

“You don't have to reinvent the wheel, you can use these tools because you can be sure they have been tested and they have the best current knowledge available from different European research institutions and cities, that deal with problems just like your city is probably dealing with,” said Eva Streberová (PhD), Environmental Manager, Office of the Chief City Architect, Bratislava City.

The latest versions of these tools will be launched at the end of this month. Prototypes are already available on the project website, www.resin-cities.eu. The tools will be presented at Open European Day on 25th April 2018, which is organised by ICLEI - Local Governments for Sustainability and the European Environment Agency and co-organised by the RESIN project.

For more information about the RESIN project, click here.

We are happy to share with you the third collaborative edition of the Resilience newsletter to present the work of European-funded projects working towards the shared objective of building resilience in Europe.

In this edition:

- Save the Date: Critical Infrastructure Resilience Conference 2018

- SMR: Kristiansand is on the Road to Resilience

- SMR: Five tools for resilient cities

- SMR: Standardization

- SMR: 9 new cities join SMR Tier 3

- SMR: Training period for Tier 4

- DARWIN: Webinar - ‘Resilience Management – From Theory to Practice: A Practical Adaption of Concept Cards’

- DARWIN: Community of Practitioners (DCoP)

- Improver Project

- RESILENS Project

- Upcoming Events

Read the newsletter at http://smr-project.eu/news/newsletter/2018/nl3/.

The Norwegian city of Kristiansand suffered from devastating flooding in autumn 2017. Lessons from the floods and participating in the European project Smart Mature Resilience (SMR) are putting the municipality of Kristiansand on the right track towards increased resilience to disasters and crises.

"What does the word ‘resilient’ actually mean?” The Mayor of Kristiansand Municipality, Harald Furre and the municipality’s Emergency Response Manager Sigurd Paulsen have been working closely on the SMR project and on the concept of resilience, which is a new concept in the Norwegian language.

Civil protection

“In everyday speech words such as robust, durable or resistant are probably the best synonyms for ‘resilient’. However, we know that these words do not cover the definition of ‘resilient’ as applicable to the Smart Mature Resilience project,” explains the Mayor, who believes that beyond traditional civil protection, real resilience means getting better at protecting lives and infrastructure.

“But, now we’re on the subject, having collaborated on the SMR project with European cities both large and small for a few years now, we believe that the word ‘resilient’ is not as fitting and all-embracing as ‘durable’. Nonetheless, the measures that a city takes with regard to preventive work and to be able to handle undesired incidents, and the way it both learns from challenges and shares experiences with other cities facing the same challenges, must all be ‘resilient’.”

Autumn floods

The “once-in-500-year” floods that hit southern Norway in October 2017 were caused by two fronts of torrential rain in three days. Mayor Furre explains that most of the municipality’s rivers and streams burst their banks. Two major rivers, the Otra and Tovdalselva, flow through the municipality of Kristiansand. The River Tovdalselva is an unregulated watercourse and rose more quickly than the Otra. In a matter of hours several residents had to evacuate themselves and their animals as water breached homes and outbuildings in the middle of the night.

A couple of weeks later, once the floods had receded, the Mayor visited the affected area with the King of Norway, Harald V.

No loss of life

“Norway’s royal family are extremely caring people with a great commitment to the community. When the King saw pictures of the floods in the media he quickly decided to visit the affected area to talk with the residents. We were met by caring and compassionate fellow human beings who had looked after each other and were in good spirits despite having lost house and home when the river burst its banks. The King stated he was particularly pleased that no lives were lost in the floods, as are we all,” commented Mayor Furre.

“Norway’s Minister of Local Government Jan Tore Sanner and Minister of Petroleum and Energy Terje Søviknes visited the flooded areas and those affected immediately after the floods, and witnessed the major material damage first-hand. A total of 186 claims were registered with insurance companies in the municipality of Kristiansand alone. 89 per cent of these, with a value of NOK 82 million, were flood-related. The River Otra is well regulated and Agder Energi’s emergency response team were able to slow the water flow by as much as 30–40 per cent. Without their efforts, the damage would have been much greater,” explains Mayor Furre, who points out some of the challenges that the municipality is more aware of following the floods.

“Many existing homes, businesses, road networks and electricity and fibre cables are in areas already at risk of landslides or flooding. While we can use the Norwegian Planning and Building Act to protect new areas, or areas that are changed as a result of rebuilding or new regulations, it’s more difficult to change things in already vulnerable areas. People don’t generally plan for once-in-500-year floods,” explains the Mayor, and emphasises that Kristiansand has a good emergency response team and is adept at handling undesired incidents.

“But we can always improve,” he says, before adding that Kristiansand is currently collaborating on the SMR project as well as with other authorities and organisations active within the community.

The University of Agder

“We’ve enjoyed excellent help from the University of Agder on the project and its Centre for Integrated Emergency Management (CIEM) and dedicated laboratory. The University has helped us to improve the way we communicate with both partner agencies and the general public. We have also had the pleasure of working closely with Vejle Municipality in Denmark, which prepared a forward-looking resilience strategy in 2016. We have studied this and incorporated some of the design into our Municipal Master Plan for the period 2017–2030.”

The SMR project started in 2015 and is due to be completed in June this year. On 13 February, Mayor Furre welcomed delegates to the second Regional Workshop of the Smart Mature Resilience project in Kristiansand, where the city presented its progress on the SMR project tools and highlighted how Kristiansand has benefited from the project. The workshop gathered 24 participants not only from the city of Kristiansand, but also from the Norwegian municipalities of Sandnes, Søgne , Vennesla, Songdalen and the city of Linköping. Amongst others, stakeholders like the Fire Brigade, advisors from Agder Energy and the County Governor's office and the Norwegian Red Cross joined the workshop, provided feedback on the European Resilience Management Guideline and tested three out of the five tools of the SMR Resilience Toolbox (Resilience Maturity Model, Risk Systemicity Questionnaire and Resilience Building Policies Tool). The workshop focussed on the uptake of the SMR Resilience Toolbox for tackling relevant hazards for Scandinavia and Northern Europe, like extreme flooding events and their cascading effects and failure of critical infrastructure.

European cities invited to join Kristiansand in building resilience

The SMR project will share its tools and guidelines with cities in public events between now and summer 2018. Following the Kristiansand workshop, European cities are invited to Brussels for a Stakeholder Workshop as part of ICLEI Europe’s Breakfast at Sustainability’s series, a showcase at the Open European Day at Bonn Resilient Cities on 25th April, and a series of regional clustering workshops in Spring 2018 in Kristiansand (Norway), Malaga (Spain), Berlin (Germany) and Athens (Greece). Global cities also received training on the SMR tools at the UN World Urban Forum on 9th February in Kuala Lumpur.

More information and registration for the events are available at the SMR Project website.